


ain't it a gentle sound (the rolling in the graves)

by acomplicatedprofession



Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Children, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Smut, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Trauma, Widowed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23619292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acomplicatedprofession/pseuds/acomplicatedprofession
Summary: **I'm not dead, just busy. Will try to update soon**
Relationships: Horacio Carrillo/Reader
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69





	1. hallways

You could hear Carrillo pacing. Always pacing. In his room, in the hallways, heavy steps on hardwood that make you want to leave your bed and ask him what he’s trying to walk away from. You could hear the baby, too, almost a year old, crying out for a mother that wasn’t there. It was a hollow sort of sound.

But tonight you couldn’t hear anything. The complex was quiet, damp with the evening heat as you sat outside your front door and stared down at a creased polaroid. Traffic lights caught on the metal of your old wedding ring, still squeezing your finger despite the fact that you weren’t technically married anymore. Marriage to a dead general didn’t hold much weight in court, but they at least had the decency to put you in a guarded neighborhood. A small condolence, you supposed, a half-assed apology for the body (what was left of it) that you saw eight months prior. Or maybe they just didn’t want to deal with the chances of you being kidnapped again. Either way, you got an apartment. You didn’t say anything about it being nearly a half-hour from the hospital where you worked. A bodyguard and a long commute was better than getting shot. At least, it should be.

You didn’t work today, though. You couldn’t do anything today except drag yourself out of your twin bed and make a shitty cup of coffee. Try not to look at the date in your pocket calendar that you’d marked in blue pen, surrounded by hearts and exclamation points and capital letters. _Four year anniversary, don’t forget!_ That was a laugh. You couldn’t forget now if tried.

The picture was crumpled in your hand, folded over with faded edges and stained from one too many cycles in the dryer. You could still make out your face though, kissing a stubbled cheek with your left hand towards the camera, a small diamond glittering in flash-bulb. It was bad for you, you knew it, but you let yourself sink into the memory for a while, ignore the sound of cars and sirens and the feeling of brick against your back. You hadn’t realized your eyes were closed until they shot open again, disturbed by the sound of footsteps.

A man came into view soon after and you let out a breath, relieved. It was just Carrillo, your neighbor. The man who paced and whose mother came over to watch his baby daughter and who woke up at night screaming. Strange, how much you knew about him when you’d never really had a conversation. Passing pleasantries when you moved in, a few hellos and goodbyes. You didn’t know a thing about him but at the same time, you knew everything.

You also knew that he was covered in blood.

Standing up quickly from the floor, you stepped towards him and waved, not knowing if you should say anything about the gun still in his hand and the way his shirt smelled like copper. As he came closer, you stuffed the picture in your back pocket. Carrillo’s eyes were blank, but his jaw was set in a hard line that only just softened when he caught sight of you.

“Are you okay?” you asked, moving to the side to let him reach his door. A nod, with gritted teeth and curled hands. The rational part of you knew you should probably leave him alone, you’d heard things about him, about what he’d done. But the side of you that stitched up bullet wounds and started heartbeats couldn’t help but be concerned. He turned away from you, your cue to leave, but you just rested your shoulder against the wall and watched him, your eyes following as he struggled to bring out his house keys. His hands were shaking.

“Here, let me,” you said, brushing off Carrillo’s objections. When you opened the door and handed back his keys, your fingertips were stained red. When he thanked you, you shook your head, still standing in his foyer. “Don’t mention it,” you said and you looked back down at his hands. His knuckles were cracked, raw and blooming the color of the night air, but you knew better than to mention anything. _Ask him no questions and he will tell you no lies,_ you thought.

You walked back to your apartment and came back a few minutes later, holding a bowl of warm water and a first-aid bag. Carrillo seemed surprised at the sight, a near-stranger in his kitchen tearing bandages with her teeth, but if he wanted you to leave he didn’t say so. He just leaned against his counter, his breathing ragged, and watched as you reached for him.

“I’m alright, you really don’t need to-”

“Relax, I’m an RN,” you said and his eyebrows raised again, “Really, I am. I doubt you could do this by yourself, anyway.”

The blood on Carrillo’s shirt, as it turned out, was not his. This was both relieving and terrifying, so you tried to only focus on being gentle with the bleeding seams on his knuckles. It wouldn’t do well to think about what his handgun, now resting on his kitchen table, had done before you saw him. You talked to keep your mind occupied, your hands acting on autopilot. “Where’s your daughter?” you said, sparing a glance up at him.

“She’s uh- She’s at my mother’s. Don’t like her around when I…” He grew quiet again. You nodded, doing your best to look comforting.

“Yeah, I get it,” and with that you gave him a gentle smile. You’ve missed the weight of a man’s hands, as unfamiliar and bloody as they are. You’d almost forgotten the feeling. It had been, what, almost a year now? Funny, how time seems to slow when you’ve got nowhere to go and no one to share it with.

When you got up, done bandaging his split knuckles, you let yourself brush your hands across Carrillo’s arms. You spend the rest of the night hating yourself for it. 

⫸ ——— ⫷

A few nights later and he was pacing again, this time in the hallway. You could hear the baby crying, desperate and high-pitched, and you stepped to open your front door. You didn’t sleep most nights, anyway.

Carrillo turned his head at the sound of your doorknob, silently mouthing an apology as he looked at your pajamas and ruffled hair. “It’s fine,” you whispered and you smiled, looking down at his daughter.

“Couldn’t sleep?” you asked and he shook his head, his shoulders heavy. The bags under his eyes were deeper, colored like bruises. You reached for the baby.

“Can I?” you asked, and he nodded, letting you take her from his arms to rest her on your chest. Rocking on your feet, you pressed a kiss to her hair and rubbed circles into her back, remembering all the parenting books that had littered your coffee table when you were still optimistic. She fell asleep within minutes and you wanted to be proud, but all you could feel was bitterness. You stroked at the back of her head, soothing when she began to stir against your breasts.

“How did you do that?” he questioned, exhausted.

“I like kids,” you shrugged, looking down at his sleeping daughter and moving towards his door. Carrillo’s brows furrowed.

“But you don’t have any,” he observed, his voice quiet. You shook your head.

“No, my husband-” you tried to give a small smile, “My husband and I were trying for a long time, but-” _Then he was shot to hell and got a machete upside the head, so it didn’t really work out._ You bit your tongue.

He cleared his throat and stepped forward. “Thank you,” he said, his expression earnest.

“It’s no problem,” you said, noticing the worried expression on his face as the baby stirred. “I can set her down, if you want?” and Carrillo nodded, relieved. Pointing you towards the nursery, he led you through his apartment and watched as you set her down in her crib, smoothing a hand across her stomach when her arms reached out for you.

Righting yourself, you stood up. “She’s a sweet kid,” you observed, “I bet she looks like her mother.”

You regret the words as soon as they escape you, knowing from the gossip of police wives that she had died giving birth to his daughter. Hurried, whispered sentences fell from your mouth as you attempted to apologize. “I’m sorry- I didn’t mean to-” and he quieted you, a sad smile on his lips.

“It’s okay,” he assured, “She does.” 

That’s all you got out of him before he walked you back to your apartment, trying not to dwell on the way his hand felt on the dip of your lower back.


	2. blood routines

A few weeks had passed and you and Horacio had settled into a strange little routine.

He’d show at your door, knocking desperately with his hair ruffled and his pajama pants low on his hips, and you would walk with him into his apartment without a second thought, following the sound of fragile coughs and fussy cries. He always apologized for waking you, and you didn’t have the heart to tell him you were up most of the time anyway. Sleep was something that still eluded you.

You had stood in his kitchen once, pacing over hardwood as you held his daughter in your arms again. You had turned too fast, or maybe he was standing too close, but all you knew is that you were inches away from his face and it took everything you had and didn’t not to close the gap and press your mouth to his, longing for the taste of someone else to swallow you whole and help you forget. Forget what, you didn’t want to think about.

Instead you just stared, your breath growing heavy as his eyes fell onto your lips, magnetic and daring you to draw closer. A beat. A passing glance. A bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed words. You could have stayed like that forever, stock-still with the blood pounding in your ears, but the baby coughed against your shoulder and broke your daze, making him step away. Horacio took her from your arms and looked at you again, his expression hard to place.

“It’s getting late,” he whispered, still not looking up from your mouth.

You coughed and turned away from him, stepping towards the door. “Yeah, yeah it is,” you agreed. “I’ll see you around.” You didn’t look back as you walked towards the door.

⫸ ——— ⫷

The ring was cold against your palm but it burned as you slid it off your finger, fiddling with the metal band in the muddy darkness of your bedroom. You set it on your nightstand, next to the wedding picture that sat face down against the wood. When morning came, you didn’t put it back on again.

⫸ ——— ⫷

A month later. It’s turned warmer now, the July heat causing tensions to rise and guns to be drawn. Carrillo hasn’t been around much. You’ve seen enough of the newspapers and radio reports to know why.

He asked you to take care of the baby once, on a Sunday morning as he tore through his apartment, pulling on heavy tactical boots and speaking in hurried Spanish through a walkie talkie. If it were anyone else they would’ve seemed frantic. Panicked, even, but he just looked… intense. It was the look that your husband used to have, with the same set jaw and military posture.

He needed to go, now. He couldn’t make it to his mother’s and he wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important and he couldn’t tell you why just, please. Just this once.

So you spend the day in his living room, stepping over teething toys and plastic dolls as the one-year-old toddled around the house. He told you her name was Isabelle.

There are a few pictures tacked to the walls. Horacio receiving some sort of medal. Isabelle in what looks to be a hospital crib. A college degree. A wedding photo. The last one makes your throat choke up and you turn away, not needing another reminder that you weren’t the one next to him. You were a neighbor. A glorified babysitter, really. Both of you were too broken for more.

⫸ ——— ⫷

Horacio came back to you wiping down his kitchen counter with the baby lying on a blanket. He had to do a double-take when he only sees the back of your head, convinced momentarily that his wife had come back somehow. He was wrong, but you weren’t an unwelcome sight.

When you turn to him with a blinding smile, Horacio had to remind himself that he couldn’t step forward and kiss the crown of your hair like he’d done years past. As much as it felt like it sometimes, you weren’t his.

He toed his boots off in the foyer and pried off his tactical vest, leaving them in a pile by the front door and walking to sit by his daughter. “Thank you for staying with her,” he said, reaching down to set her in his arms.

“Of course, what are friends for?”

He laughed at this with a tiny, imperceptible shake of his head. It comes out cold. **“** We’re not just friends and you know it,” was whispered under his breath and you do a double-take because no, he couldn’t have said-

“What was that?” you asked. He shook his head and gave you a tight-lipped smile.

“Nothing. Just… We are friends. I’m glad you know it.” You nodded slowly, mind still reeling as you picked up your purse and moved towards the door. You leaned down to press a kiss to Isabelle’s forehead and she giggled, making you smile.

“Bye, sweet thing,” and you look up through your lashes to meet his eyes. “Goodbye, Horacio,” you said.

He didn’t say anything as you walked through the door. He just watched, his mouth parting to wet his lips as the lock clicked behind you with the sound of your footsteps.

⫸ ——— ⫷

He’d stumbled into your apartment one night, after another impromptu babysitting gig. He looked like shit, all marbled bruises and Steri-stripped cuts and bloody knuckles. When you opened your door and let him inside he just about collapsed onto your couch. It didn’t take you a second longer to find the first-aid kit you kept underneath your bathroom sink, having grown used to keeping it nearby. Horacio was still sitting with both eyes open, _thank god,_ when you crouched to kneel on the floor in front of him. Blood was seeping through the left sleeve of his uniform, warm and sticky.

“You ripped your stitches!” you whispered, trying not to wake Isabelle sleeping in the other room. He just nodded, glancing down to his arm with a detached sort of acknowledgment. It was as if he was looking at a mildly interesting news report. He was going to be the death of you.

You didn’t think about what you were doing. You barely registered how your fingers reached to undo his shirt until he caught them in his hands. His eyes were dark when you pulled away, your wrists colored with pink fingerprints. “Horacio,” you pleaded, “Let me help you.”

He let his hands fall back to his side and leaned back into the cushions. His eyes fell closed as you lifted the fabric off his chest, leaving him in an undershirt that, without all the sweat and blood and dust, would probably be white. Trying to be gentle, you avoided staring at his bare skin when you pushed the sleeves off his arms. They were toned. Strong-looking.

When you finally managed to get the bleeding to stop and a set of butterfly stitches taped to his skin (“They won’t last, but they should hold for now if you don’t move around too much,”) it was all you could do to not slap Horacio across the face. He made you so damn worried sometimes.

Falling forward against the edge of the couch cushions, you moved to hold your face in your hands, your arms knocking against his thigh. Horacio nudged you with his knee when you didn’t say anything, his fingers brushing against your shoulder.

“Hey,” he said softly, his tone firm, “Look at me.” You glanced up at him, your vision blurry and your elbows digging into the sofa. “I’m alright, _muñeca_. I’m okay, see?” and he motioned down to his bandaged arm.

Shaking your head, you tried to suppress the growing sob in your throat. You couldn’t keep doing this. Playing nurse and nanny, pretending like it didn’t kill you to see him go, pretending like whatever the two of you had was enough. It wasn’t. It never had been.

A tear slipped down your cheek, dropping onto his pants and blooming dark on the rough denim. His hands reached to the sides of your ribcage, pulling you up by underneath your arms, and you let yourself fall into his chest. As he stood with you his forehead fell against yours, your fingertips digging into the bare skin of his biceps. You stayed, just breathing in the scent of copper and spiced aftershave, for what seemed like hours. Neither of you were brave enough to do anything else.


	3. stupid thing

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

It’s spoken low, almost whispered as Horacio looked down at his bruising hands - the ones you’d rinsed of blood just minutes prior. He could see the air settle in your chest as you drew a breath, the bottom edge of your lip caught between your teeth. You didn’t really need to come over to his apartment, you both knew he could’ve taken care of himself, but he left his door unlocked anyway. He humored the little things.

Your body was eclipsed in yellow lamplight, half-cast in the shadow of late evening as you stood at his kitchen counter. Elbows rested against the Formica tabletop, you cradled your face in your palms. “What kind of question is that?” you asked with a gentle laugh, shaking your head as if to rid yourself of the fog his words blanket over you. Raising his head to meet your eyes, his expression was measured. He was always so solid, so present and wide and made of hard edges, but now he seemed… gentler. Not as rushed.

The longer Horacio looked at you, though, the more you realized that he was a man used to getting answers and you still hadn’t given him one yet. “I dunno,” you sighed, ducking your head to examine the speckled laminate beneath your arms. “Should I be?”

“You should.”

You hummed, a low and non-committal purse of the lips that was at odds with the conversation you were having. That he was trying to have with you, more like. When you didn’t offer anything more, Horacio stood to open the door for you.

The air was tight - suffocating and collapsing in on itself with something you didn’t want to give a name to yet because that would mean it was real. That you weren’t just imagining the way his chest brushed against your back and his breath fanned over your hair. That his hand on your side wasn’t just to move you out into the hallway. His fingers pressed into your hip and you bit your tongue.

“Thank you,” he said, “For everything.” You nodded mutely, looking at him. Looking up at him, rather. You could tell he wanted to do something. The space around him was buzzing, slow and rippling warm and his hands kept shifting like they didn’t know where to go and where to stop. You let his palms map over your shoulders until they settled at the base of your neck, his fingers threading through your hair. Your eyes fluttered shut and you fell into him, arms slowly snaking around his shoulders as your forehead met the hard line of his jaw.

Your nose brushed his ear. He swallowed, the hands on your neck tensing slightly. Your heels lifted off the floor. You could feel his chest rising, shallow and with a ragged sort of inhale that rasped in his throat. Somewhere, off on another floor, you could hear footsteps and were reminded that you were still standing in his doorway. Your fingers curled around his biceps and you tried to remember how to breathe, not wanting to tear yourself away but not knowing what else to do. He smelled like smoke and shell casings. Like home.

Horacio turned his head as you moved to let go, his mouth ghosting over your cheek and you could feel stubble scraping against your face but you didn’t care. You didn’t care that his hands were still bruised and there was a cut on his hairline you hadn’t noticed before now or that he’d tracked in dried blood on the soles of his boots - you didn’t care. Maybe you should’ve.

His lips were hot. Not warm. Hot. Burning and slightly chapped and pressing hard but you pressed harder, swallowing gasps as you squeezed your eyes shut and tried not to think about what you were doing. You knew if you did, you’d stop. So you didn’t. You didn’t do anything except slot your mouth against his and pull him in closer, the tactical fabric of his uniform familiar and heavy in your hands. Stars speckled beneath the black of your closed eyelids and the world was spinning, too fast and off its axis like a poorly-made globe and it was all you could do to keep your toes on the ground. You were weightless, encased in liquid amber that seared the tips of your fingers and the backs of your knees until they threatened to buckle underneath the weight of all the things you had yet to say.

You let go at the same time. His pupils were blown black, melting like burned spun-sugar as his eyes widened at the sight of you. _What a sight that must be,_ you managed to think to yourself. It was like your mind was wading in deep water, slogging two minutes behind and making it impossible to focus on anything other than the way he looked at your lips. You could tell they were swollen and your tongue darted out by reflex, wetting the still-pouting flesh. Horacio’s gaze followed it diligently, almost reverently, and the hand on your neck slid across the dip of your back.

“I-” you began, fixing your sight on the top button of his shirt as you spoke because you didn’t think you could bear to look him in the eyes. “I- I….” You angled yourself out the doorway. His face stiffened, back into that set jaw and hard brow. “I should go,” you whispered. “I’m sorry.”

It was stupid. So fucking stupid. Why would you- no, you knew why. That wasn’t the question. Why would _he_? Why would he do that? Why would he let you do that? He must’ve known, must’ve realized that you wouldn’t - _couldn’t_ \- do this anymore but you let yourself do it anyway because you told yourself a little bit of him was better than nothing but now… now. Now you weren’t so sure.

You stepped away, budding tears fogging your vision and streaking everything in a sea-slate gray that made your eyes burn. Not looking back, you walked towards your apartment door and heard the click of the knob locking before you realized you’d made it inside. Stupid, stupid, stupid. You had half a mind to just bang your head into the drywall until you crumbled along with it, a pile of chalk smoke and rubble. Unconsciousness was tempting.

Sleep rarely appeared on the best of days, though, so that wasn’t likely. You’d long since made peace with the shadows sunk into your eyes.

Taking a walk at one in the morning was not a very smart move. You knew that. You were an educated, fairly intelligent person who knew better than to wander around in the dead of night while there was a war going on. And yet here you were, chain-smoking a pack of Marlboro’s you’d bought from the 24/7 corner store and strolling around empty streets, watching street lamps flicker on damp cobblestone sidewalks. You hated cigarettes. Always had. You used to chide your husband about it, never allowing it inside the house or near enough for you to smell the residue it always left on his clothes. Oh, bitter irony. A funny, stupid thing. Stupid things.

You’re a stupid thing. You should’ve known they were watching.


	4. knight in shining cargo

You were cold. That was all you could remember. Things returned slowly, falling in and out of your memory like specters. A hand over your mouth. Concrete. A flickering light bulb and a sicario - who couldn’t have been very smart because if he was he’d have realized that you didn’t know anything. Okay, maybe that was a stretch. You knew a little, courtesy of Horacio. Too much, probably. Enough to make yourself a target, anyways. Damn this. Damn you.

The sound of gunshots was enough to wake you from your daze and you vaguely register the taste of blood in your mouth. You force your eyes open, tensing your hands that lay tied behind you to get the feeling to return. The room was bare, faintly lit by the weak light of the early morning, and you felt your shoulders pressed up against plaster. Oh. You were on the floor.

This was much less professional than the last time you were kidnapped. Of course, then you were only bait. A pretty face with a ring on your left hand and the last name of a man they knew they wanted dead. Well, they got that soon enough.

You could be bait this time, too, for a different man. Apparently, you had a type.

⫸ ——— ⫷

Shouting. Running. Slamming doors. Horacio’s yelling something in Spanish. Something about sicarios and traps and hostages and- You. His…. friend? Neighbor? Unpaid babysitter, who also knew how he took his coffee? (Scalding hot with tons of sugar, in the white mug with the chipped lip that was always in the top left cabinet.)

They used zip-ties on your wrists. You kinda want to laugh. Shoulders tight from being pulled behind you for so long, you shift your weight until pinpricks erupt across your numb legs. You should probably call out to him or something, to speed the process along, but your throat is burning something awful so you just let your head fall back and listen to the sound of tactical boots.

_Three._

A round of gunfire, shot quick from the hip of a stranger you can’t imagine makes for very good company. You can hear bodies fall, but you know it’s not him. He wouldn’t go down that easy.

_Two._

“Dónde está ella?”

“Mi coronel, aquí.” A muffled curse. The cock of a gun. Then, the door is pushed open with a loud creak of its rusted hinges.

_One._

He’s on you like a man starved, all dark green fabric and hulking shoulders as he seems to just… appear, crouching down with a hand brushing your cheek. You don’t actually remember seeing him walk over, so maybe you really did hit your head on something. That would explain the ringing in your ears. And your busted lip. And the way that every time Horacio moved, there seemed to be two of him dragging out a few seconds behind.

Hands, strong and callused and more familiar than they should be, grip at your shoulders to coax your head up. The world comes into focus then- less blurry but way more frightening. The walls are streaked with red and your eyes catch a crimson path on the floor, snaking around to the doorway. All you see is a man’s shoe.

“Hey, hey look at me.”

You feel yourself- as though disembodied- shaking your head frantically as you duck your face to the floor. He reaches to cut away the ties around your hands, one knee braced against the floor and his mouth pursed in a line. The scent of gunpowder chokes you, presses down on your lungs like the deadweight of a corpse. Your face feels hot, burning like you’re running a high fever and you can’t string two words together without thinking about blood and bodies you can’t fix and how you can’t remember anything - which means you can’t remember what they’ve done to you. It’s too much. It’s all too much. It’s too much. It’s too-

_“Look at me.”_

Fuck.

Horacio’s hand moves to cup your chin, the pad of his thumb tracing over the split skin of your bottom lip. His eyes seem to hold everything inside them, the embers of a flame you’re used to seeing sedated now flickering something dark. Something you should want to run from.

What’s another arrow in the quiver of your self-loathing? Not much, you suppose. Not much at all.

You look.

⫸ ——— ⫷

He walks you back to the complex with his fingers still curled around your arm.

“Are you alright?”

Horacio’s voice is quiet, softer than you’ve ever heard it but _god_ , what you would give to hear it again.

“Yeah, yeah I’m- I’m fine. Just… tired.”

He nods - unconvinced but letting you lie anyway - and steps back to open the door for you. Right. He has your spare key.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and at that Horacio shakes his head. He’s good at hiding things, at hiding how he feels, but you know he’s holding his breath- trying to keep from frowning. For your sake. “I- I don’t know if I can do this, Horacio,” and you try to focus on the way his chest rises and falls to steady yourself but it’s not a good idea because it just makes you want to collapse, dead on your feet, into him. “Whatever this is.”

“Chiquita-”

“No- no. Don’t. You-,” you choke out the words, fighting tears as the exhaustion of the day finally seems to make itself known. “You can’t call me that. I- I’m not your _chiquita_ ,” and the last word comes out a bit sharper than you wanted it to, a bit too biting towards the man standing outside your apartment door with your keys still in his hands. Your eyes soften when you see the jagged metal gripped in his palm, hands tensing with scarred, white-stretched knuckles. Horacio’s jaw is tight again and you’re reminded of how you teased him once. Y _ou’ll grind your teeth down clenching your face like that. Loosen up a bit._

The words leave your mouth, breathy and slightly shaking, before you realize what you say. “I’m not your anything.”

You want to slam the door in his face. You want him to slam the door in _your_ face. You want so bad to be angry, to have someone to blame besides yourself and your own fucked up head, but you can’t. So you don’t. You just walk into your apartment and let the lock click quietly behind you, listening to footsteps as they retreat across the hall.

The rational part of your brain tells you to go to bed, to fall asleep after a good cry in the comfort of your bedroom surrounded by soft things and another wall separating you from him, but you hadn’t really made a habit of listening to reason lately. Why start now? The floor was as good a place as any.

Your back slid down against the door as you sat, drawing your knees to your chest with a shallow breath. There was a quote from somewhere. Shakespeare, maybe. _Oh brawling love, oh loving hate, oh anything of nothing first created. This love feel I, that feel no love in this._

 _This love feel I, that feel no love in this._ This love… this…

Romeo and Juliet. That’s what it was. The irony of it makes you laugh, the sound lacking humor as you shake your head.

They were doomed from the start, really. Still, there was something beautiful about it. Dying for someone else. Knowing they’d do the same.

You would die for him. That wasn’t what scared you.

What scared you… what scared you was knowing he would die for you, too. Just like before.

The thought makes your chest seize up, the lump in your throat growing heavier with every passing second. You couldn’t do that to him. You couldn’t live with yourself if you did. You barely lived with it now.

You fall asleep to the sound of crying. It wasn’t yours.


	5. okay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been almost a month but here u go!!!

You’d been given time off from your shifts at the hospital, courtesy of the whole “kidnapped and experienced blunt trauma to the head” thing, but you were due back soon and knew you couldn’t keep dragging your feet. As much as you wanted to dig your heels in the sand, to bury your head in it until everything was muffled and coarse and static, you couldn’t. Not forever. You had a job and responsibilities and friends and a fucking _life_ to get back to but everything still felt splintered and raw, pieces that were just starting to come together breaking apart again and leaving you, sitting on the cold tile of your bathroom floor heaving gulps of air like a drowning man and feeling just as desperate. **  
**

Everything had been too much, too slow and too fast at the same time and you just needed… space. To think. To try and not feel so fucking guilty and rotted from the inside. It had been eating at you, gnawing aimlessly for so long you hardly even noticed it before pushing it back down but now, now it was tearing you apart limb from limb with slow-snapping teeth, screaming everything and everyone you’d been trying to forget since this whole shitshow started. You used to be normal.

You used to make grocery lists and get called pet names and go to dinner parties. You used to gossip with the other military wives, sip wine with a warm hand on your knee and a chest against your back. You used to have so many things. Then… then you didn’t. And you were just starting to be okay with that because you could at least pretend you had _him_. For a moment, you did. You had him and he had you for a brief, sparking moment that felt like fire and tasted like blood but was the best thing you’d ever known.

Now you didn’t have anything. And it was your own damn fault.

You could hear Dr. Reyes’ voice in your head now, chiding you with a shake of her graying head. _It’s not your fault,_ she’d say to you as you sat on the crinkly fake leather of her office couch, wringing a tissue in your hands until it chafed your palms. She’d called a few times since you’d come back - _back_ , not home, because it wasn’t really home - concerned as to why you hadn’t been making it to your weekly sessions. Her voice was warm, familiar and grounding and a little pitying but you didn’t really mind. It was kind of in a therapist’s job description to pity. Maybe that wasn’t the right word but you appreciated the concern all the same, assuring her that _no, you were alright_ and _just not feeling very well._ The last part wasn’t even a lie, because the ache knotting something awful in your head had yet to subside.

Horacio had taken you to the hospital after he got you out of the safe house, sitting in the waiting room and dwarfing the little plastic folding chair. He was still wearing his tactical vest, the gun holster digging into your hip as you leaned on him. You could barely string two sentences together with the bright fluorescent lights glaring in your eyes, so you’d screwed them shut and pressed your forehead into his chest, listening as he explained what happened to the receptionist.

You remembered her asking if you were married, feeling the shake of his head as his chin dipped slightly against your hair. _Are you in a relationship?_ Another shake, Horacio’s arms sliding down to help prop you up on your feet. You didn’t really expect him to answer differently. It still stung a little bit, though. 

An hour later and you’d walked out with a mild concussion diagnosis and a prescription for some painkillers, pressing the heel of your hand to your temple as Horacio led you back to the Jeep. You tried not to think about the bullet holes in the passenger side door and how tightly his hands gripped the steering wheel.

 _He probably doesn’t have great memories of hospitals_ , you’d mused with your head lolling against the window, gaze bleary and unfocused as it swept over dusty backroads. _With his wife and all._ You hummed as the thoughts churned through your head, making your expression in the glass frown a little deeper. _Maybe that’s why he always came back to his apartment so roughed up. Probably doesn’t like going if he can help it. I wouldn’t either, if I had to watch my wife die. I’d hate it._

⫸ ——— ⫷

Horacio sank deeper into the couch cushions, a hand cradling Isabella’s head as she lay across his chest. She was sleeping soundly for the first time in days and he let out a sigh, careful not to jostle her as he reached over to the phone on the table. He’d forgotten how difficult it could be, without you there.

He wanted to call. He wanted to see you, to talk to you, to do something. The plastic cord of the telephone tangled slightly when he held the receiver, thumbnail dragging over the buttons and catching on the shallow grooves of waxy plastic. It warmed under his hand, grown restless and waiting. He set it down again.

Your voicemail left two days prior still fogged his head like the static message of a radio, the signal too soft and too out of reach but still carrying over enough to whisper and root itself in every waking moment. _It’s just- it’s just too much right now, Horacio. Maybe we can work it out. Maybe not. I- I don’t know. Take care, alright? I lo-_

You’d ended the message then, the dial tone ringing mocking and sour in his ears.

⫸ ——— ⫷

It was Friday night. You were due back on Monday, but it was far enough away that you could pretend not to care. Things were a bit better now. You were eating and showering and doing laundry. Responsible-type things. You could finally sleep through the night, even if you were plagued by nightmares. Sleep was sleep, right?

He wasn’t sleeping much, though. Not tonight, at least. Undercut by the sound of Isabella’s fussy cries, you could hear him pacing. You laughed a bit, not because it was funny but because it was familiar.

Before you could realize what you were doing, you slowly padded over to the door, not caring that you hadn’t brushed your hair or were wearing old pajamas. He’d seen worse, anyways. You wordlessly took the baby from his arms. His eyes seemed sunken in, a bit darker and a bit more hollow. You didn’t say anything, though. Neither of you did. You just stood in the hallway, a quiet agreement to not look each other in the face blanketing the air in a way that made your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth.

She settled quickly against you, hiccuping breaths slowing underneath your touch. The air was hot, humid and sticky with the Colombian summer in a way that made your head soupy. You could hear cars in the distance, sirens and horns and all the violent things that had led him to you and you to him. You pressed a kiss to the top of Isabella’s head, smiling at the way she smelled like the color pink - the innocent softness that you’d grown to love like it was your own. You missed it.

Horacio’s eyes were downcast, broad shoulders taking up most of your field of vision in a way that had your throat closing up. You reached out to place her back in his arms, clearly your throat awkwardly when your hands brushed. He mumbled a thanks and you shook your head, stepping back towards your apartment. Your hand rested on the doorframe, tangible evidence of your hesitancy as you stood with your back still to him.

You turned, the ghost of your profile just catching the way he glanced up when you opened your mouth to speak. “I-” you began and then let the word drift off, hanging heavy and uncertain. A whispered goodbye finally escaped your lips as you turned the knob, the metal searing cold against your skin.

⫸ ——— ⫷

Still Friday night. Or Saturday morning. Hard to tell, in the witching hours when everything was dampened and tilted sideways. You felt tilted sideways. Off-balance. You didn’t even remember leaving your apartment.

Your steps faltered, the few yards from your door to his stretched out until it lay miles away, a distant exit on a road you’d been down before but couldn’t for the life of you remember when or why or how to get back on. Wrenching your eyes shut, you let your forehead fall against the plaster of the wall beside you, the stucco cool and pebbling hard beneath your skin. The air was tight in your chest, shallow breaths doing nothing to ease the choking feeling in your throat. It was like hands were wrapped around you, pushing down on everything until you felt ready to burst.

Legs moving of their own accord, you found yourself standing outside his apartment entrance, the painted wood staring back at you, impersonal. What were you even doing?

The door opened just as you were about to turn away, hinges creaking slightly and making you wince. He called your name, voice soft and slightly confused. _It was late. Were you okay? Was everything alright?_ He didn’t get to finish the last question before you fell into him, arms thrown around his neck and gripping the fabric of his shirt so tight your knuckles paled. “ _I need you,_ ” you whispered, your voice thick with tears.

You buried your face in his neck and his breath fanned out over your hairline, tickling your cheek when he looked down. “I’m sorry- I’m sorry but I- I just-” He quieted you, whispering comfort into the shell of your ear until your hiccups slowed and the tears dried sticky on your cheeks. You could feel his hand on your back, the other braced against the doorway. Sniffling, you pulled away slightly. “I’m sorry.”

Horacio shifted to thread a hand through your hair, his touch gentle - almost hesitant. The front of his shirt was damp with your crying and you frowned at it slightly, moving your hands to his chest. He shook his head with a small smile, his own hands moving to rest atop yours and you were suddenly reminded of how big he was. It should’ve terrified you, standing there and being comforted by a man like that, a man capable of things you didn’t want to speak aloud, but it didn’t. It never had.

“Don’t worry about it,” Horacio said. Oh. Right. The shirt. Hands reached up to cradle your face, rough fingertips smoothing over the curve of your jaw. You let your eyes fall closed, stepping closer until his feet widened. His thumb caught the downward drag of a tear, wiping it away across your cheekbones. “I’m sorry, too.”

⫸ ——— ⫷

He’d led you back into his apartment, your steps quiet and your voices hushed as you sat down by his kitchen table. Your eyes were still puffy and everything was fogged up, burning a little and blurry the way fighting sleep made you feel. It was dark outside. Your only witness was the moon.

You traced the rim of your glass of water as you spoke, a single finger circling until your nail caught its edge. **  
**

“We should talk,” he said as he drew up a chair. His voice was quiet, rounded out on the edges and tired. You laughed a bit as you took a sip.

“Yeah,” you agreed. “Yeah we should.”

So you talked.

“Are you alright?” Horacio asked after a few minutes where you both sort of said things but didn’t really say much at all. You nodded, resting your cheek on a propped hand, the grainy wood digging into your elbow.

“Yeah,” you looked back at him, smiling. You were trying to be, at least. “I think- I think I was just scared, y’know?”

He frowned slightly. “I would never let anything happen to you.”

You shook your head. You already knew that. “No, no, it’s not that.” you began, your eyes downcast and swimming murky in the water glass. “I was scared of myself. Of things all going to shit again. I didn’t want you to-” you blinked back tears, reaching to wipe them away with the heel of your palm. “I didn’t want what happened to him to happen to you. I don’t think I could, I- _fuck_ ,” you whispered, cradling your head in your hands. You closed your eyes. “Sometimes I can’t help feeling like it’s my fault. And I know it’s not, _I know that_ it’s just- ”

“It’s easier to blame yourself,” Horacio whispered, his hands coming to your wrists. “Believe me, I know.”

Yeah, he would, wouldn’t he?

He brushed the hair back from your face and you remembered when he kissed you, thinking of spun sugar and amber and other sweet things that could still burn your tongue.

You entertained the idea of facades for a moment, the notion that you could somehow still manage to build something out of brick and mortar and silence and keep him out. He’d already seen you with all your walls crumbling down, though, so that wouldn’t accomplish much. A self-deluded exercise in futility, pretending like you didn’t need him and he didn’t need you. You were fighting a losing battle with yourself, a civil war of body and mind and heart that left you sick and dog-tired, just searching for someone to heal with.

It seems you’d found what you were looking for.

You moved your hands, threading your fingers into his. Ghosting your lips against the inside of his wrist, your words were hoarse and came out before you could stop to think. “Can I kiss you?”

A large palm came to your cheek, coaxing your face closer. Horacio’s chair scraped the tile as he moved but you barely noticed the sound, your eyes closing as his forehead fell against yours. You felt his smile instead of seeing it. His voice wrapped around you, all-encompassing and rushing in your ears like the roar of a heavy ocean wave. “If you want to.”

The first kiss had been nice. Hell, it’d been a lot more than nice but this… this was different. Somehow better. Slower. Quiet and soft but still kindling a smoke in your belly, gentle blue gas flames licking at every inch of your skin until you felt dizzy with heat and with touch. His hands had fallen to your waist, shifting your weight with no argument until you sat draped on his lap. He was strong underneath you, solid and warm and safe.

You recalled the feeling of stubble beneath your hands that first time in the hallway, so you moved to press a kiss to his jaw, over all the contours and shadows you never had the time nor the courage to map out before. You wanted to memorize him, everything from the way his fingers felt on your hip to the feeling of his mouth against the hollow of your throat. You didn’t want to run anymore.

“Stay here,” Horacio breathed as you shifted in his arms, reaching to card your hands through cropped hair at the nape of his neck. You nodded, still hiccuping leftover tears into his mouth as they bled into moans.

“Okay,” you whispered


	6. good morning

You looked beautiful when you slept. You always looked beautiful, it didn't really matter when or how or where, but here - in his bed under morning light - you were iridescent. He’d spend hours looking at you if you let him, mapping out every expanse of your skin until he was dizzy with it. With you. Everything with you is softer around the edges, backlight and glowing from the inside out until the entire world is tinged sunburst yellow. Before he had to leave and it was painted scarlet again.

Horacio didn’t want to think about that now, though. It was Saturday morning on a summer day and your arms were slung around his neck. Everything else could wait.

You moved your head from the pillow beside him to rest on his chest, eyes flirting with the idea of opening. _Not yet, please. Let me look a little longer._

“What time is it?” you mumbled, slurring and quiet. Your eyelashes brushed his collarbones as you looked up, heavy-lidded and slow. His hands left your waist to cup at your cheeks, fingers skimming sandpaper-light as they smoothed away the furrow of your brow.

“Go back to sleep,” he assured you, tracing the shell of your ear. “It’s still early.” You nodded, your head a dead weight on your neck as you settled.

Your tone was humorous when you met him with a mock salute, whispered and apparently oblivious to the way he sucked in a breath through his teeth at the words. “ _Yes, sir._ ”

⫸ ——— ⫷

“Horacio” you spoke into the pillows, muffled by down and cotton. Turning to face him, you were met with the sight of his bare back, rising slowly as he slept. “Isabella’s crying.”

He made a non-committal noise in the back of his throat, the muscles in his shoulders rippling as he shifted. Snorting slightly at the sight of his bedhead, you contemplated the idea of grabbing a camera before getting up, your legs meeting the slight residual chill of morning air when you lifted the covers. The clock on his bedside table read just past six and you groaned, rubbing at your eyes with a sluggish hand as you walked towards the door. Twenty minutes later she was changed and sated, sleeping quietly again for what you hoped would be at least another two hours. _Don’t jinx it._

Your bare feet met the cold tile of his kitchen floor as you stepped forward, mind still fogged over and molasses sticky. You could walk around his apartment with your eyes closed, though, so you weren’t too worried.

Coffee would be nice. Yes. Coffee. Motions slow and rehearsed, you opened the cabinet to bring out the mug with the chipped lip, white china smooth against your hands except for the single grained slope that had worn duller after years of rubbing touch. You leaned against the counter as you waited for the pot to fill, the rough granite pushing into your hip but doing little to wake you any further. The mug was filled shortly after and you forgoed any cream or milk, remembering how he only put in ungodly amounts of sugar. You took a hesitant sip, wincing at the heat and bitterness that stuck waxy to the roof of your mouth. You’d make another cup later. He could keep this one.

Setting the mug down on the small stand beside Horacio’s bed, you looked down at him. He looked handsome when he slept. Younger. Less stern, less hard and commanding the way you knew he could be but chose to quell. (Around you, anyway.) You brushed back the hair curling short on his forehead, biting down on your lip to resist the urge to grin like some love-sick teenager. It would be a little fitting, though. Love-sick. Drunk on it. A thing innocent but still shadowed, pressed down on all sides and smothering sweet. Like the faint trailing of a melody, echoing discordant on its reverb.

You lay back down, allowing yourself to be swallowed by the morning sun.

⫸ ——— ⫷

“Are we still just friends?” you teased, your fingers tracing mindless circles across his stomach. A kiss was placed at the crown of your head, slightly chapped.

“I don’t think we ever were just friends,” Horacio said with a small laugh, the words tickling and making you squirm. Humming quietly, you nodded.

“I guess not,” you agreed, shifting on the bed so you could turn and face him. “After all, I don’t think friends do this,” you said as your mouth scraped the stubble of his cheek, drawing out a small huff that fanned over your face. “Or this,” and you let it trail down to the curve of his jaw, the faint taste of salt sticking onto the dull grooves of your teeth.

You were gentle with it - with this broad, carved man that allowed your curiosities - light and saccharine to make up for all the time you had spent waiting, denying yourself of things readily given - a penance made all the more torturous by the cruelty of its beauty. But you were your own god now. “Or this,” you whispered as you finally reached his mouth.

Horacio’s chin dipped down, eyes tracing the swollen flesh of your lips as the pad of his thumb did the same.

You didn’t really believe in destiny but if it meant this, if it meant _him_ , it was suddenly something more tangible. A body you could hold, arms that you knew would open, something that had somehow - slowly and without warning or notice - turned into someone.

“I like you,” you breathed.

“I like you, too.”

“No, I-,” you said a bit desperately, pleading. The words were hot honey in your mouth, dragged and longing for a thing you already had but were terrified of losing. “I really, really like you.” His small chuckle seeped through your hair, broad arms encircling your waist and pulling you in tighter. Lips met your temple, firm but still tender.

You pushed up from where you lay on the bed, hands splayed across his chest to steady yourself as you looked at the man beneath you. The words you had yet to say hung suspended in the air, enveloping the room in a hazy, gaseous thing that tasted bitter, a bit like almonds and copper, in the back of your throat. You leaned down, gulping air with another press of your mouth against his, open and slotting easy. It was deeper this time - insistent and repeating all the things you both already took as gospel. _I love you. I love you. I love you._

You pulled back, shared breaths falling in tandem between two beating chests. Your voice was quiet.

“I love you.”

“I know,” he smiled, a hand coming to cup the nape of your neck, guiding your head down until his lips ghosted across the bow of your mouth, heady smoke and sandalwood exhales prompting your eyes to close. “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i reALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY LIKE YOUUU. AND I WANT YOU, DO YOU WANT ME? DO YOU WANT ME TOO? anyways hope u liked :)
> 
> oh also here's the carrd i made to help my brain if u wanna know more abt how i picture everything timeline-wise
> 
> https://aint-it-a-gentle-sound.carrd.co/


	7. teeth and lungs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> doesn't really fit in anywhere so this is my obligatory pwp chapter lol you don't have to read if you don't want, it won't affect the rest of the series,, pls tell me if you liked bc i thrive off of validation skdjskdj

You kiss him one night, lying there in the dark.

He tastes like coffee, tiny grains of bitter dark melting on the roof of your mouth. You can smell his aftershave, too, heady and masculine and a little salty as it mixes with summer sweat.

It’s a lot. He’s a lot. It’s just… it’s a lot.

In a good way, though. A really, really good way, intense and roaring in your temples like the flood of white noise after an ocean tide crashes. Breaking dams and ebbing water make homes in your blood and in your brain, now rendered inept. It’s a lot but you gulp it down, this intensity and this hazy, broad-shouldered body taking up your muddy vision.

Horacio’s hands slide up the sides of your thighs. You whimper when he rubs at the naked skin of your hip with his breath on your ear, his voice low. “Yes?”

“Yeah,” you breathe out, nodding as vigorously as your body will allow in its addled state. “Yes,” you repeat, steadier this time as you try to pull him closer. You can feel the thrum of his skin and sinew as it ripples against you, corded over muscle that runs hot and feels strong under your hands. The words fall apart in your mouth, broken pieces of something rich and dark making your voice high-strung and needier than you wish it was. “Please- please I need-,”

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Horacio soothes into your hair, soft and cloying even though he knows it’s not. He must know, he has to know how everything in you is drawn to him, pulled down and open and bare until your very soul is alight with goosebumps. His palms run across your stomach and all you can do is look, trying to tether yourself to earth through the feeling of his shoulders underneath your hands.

“Be patient,” he chides, his voice echoing a small smirk. You squirm underneath his touch and his gaze, both dragging over you and erupting a warmth that prompts your thighs to tense.

“I _can’t_ ,” you whine. “Please- please just-just kiss me? Please?”

Horacio obliges with another squeeze of your hips, his fingertips pressing ghosts of lavender into the soft flesh as his mouth trails up your shoulder, over your collarbones and the curve of your jaw. His teeth scrape your neck on accident, over the thin skin of your drumming pulse point, and he murmurs an apology.

“Don’t be sorry,” you whisper hoarsely, tipping your head back onto the pillows. _The ceiling is a strange color_ , you think to yourself. It’s tan in daylight but now it washes purple, swirling silver moon-shadows when bodies shift and breaths heave. The light through the window is weak, casting your vision in the fog of twilight. “Do it again.”

You hear a choked-off sort of noise, desperate and deep, before you realize it’s him. Horacio’s looking down, following the line of small flower petal bruises on the column of your throat, tracing them with a single fingertip as if he can’t fathom that you’d let him touch you. That you’d want him to.

His hair is soft underneath your hands when you grasp at it, pulling gently to meet the molten obsidian pooling in his pupils. “Horacio,” you murmur, closing your eyes. “ _Do it again_.”

His breath catches in his throat, the exhale coming out stilted when he leans down over you once more, his very presence almost smothering, encaging on all sides and pressing down until you think your bones have turned into liquid. It’s like you were kerosene, dampened and acidic until a match was struck and you both reveled in the sin of your shared arson. It wasn’t electric or sharp or acute- no, no it was engulfing, a steady pulse of movement and skin and overwhelming heat.

He pulls away and you can feel the indent of his teeth on your throat, willing your own hands to brush over them before he captures your wrists and lifts them above your head, holding them steady against the headboard.

“Don’t tease,” you beg, leaning up in an attempt to kiss him again. He only chuckles, the sound reverberating through your chest and up your sternum in a low crawl.

“You’re easy to tease, though,” Horacio mumbles against your cheek, his free hand skimming along the seam of your closed thighs. They fall open easily, not having anything left in you to be embarrassed.

“I know,” you groan, fighting back a whimper when his hips finally meet yours.

He presses his mouth to your temple, quieting you as the first ache blooms up your stomach. It hurts a little and you tell him so, but it’s soon eclipsed (or maybe becomes) a searing rise of warmth, melting honey and small sparks of _good_ through your legs and your arms until you press half-crescents into your own curled-up palms, your toes dragging against his surprisingly nice sheets.

“You’re beautiful,” Horacio whispers, letting go of your wrists to cup the rise of your cheeks. His thumbs brush against your hairline and you’re unable to look away, almost entranced by the way he says it - as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world and you’d be a fool not to see it.

He’s more tender than you thought he’d be. (But there’s still something stirring underneath the softness of his eyes, of his lips and his movement. Something untamed, waiting to be cut from its leashes at the rapture of your desire. You silently bid for it to come to the surface, not knowing what it might bring but certain you’d take anything of his that he thought to give you.)

For now, though, he was slow. Reverent.

You gasp into his mouth the same moment his hips still, everything seizing and releasing in tiny micro-pulses over and over until a hand, broad and wide and unrelenting, snakes down to circle at your damp heat and you shudder, a surging wave of everything that had been building suddenly crumbling in your aftershocks. Horacio whispers velvet things, smoke molasses praises and words that feel like poetry as he holds you, lets your hands grip wherever they can reach until they fall limp at your sides and you’re no longer writhing.

“You’re beautiful,” he repeats, his forehead pressed to yours. Your eyelids flutter shut as you laugh.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” you whisper after a few moments, opening them to see his slight, almost boyish smile. “Not bad at all.”


	8. mother knows best

One Saturday morning you lift Isabella out of her crib, a small _oomph_ pushing past your lips when she squirmed in your arms. “You’re getting heavy,” you teased as she reached for your collar, gurgling happy syllables that vaguely sounded like _mama_. You didn’t dwell on it.

“Are you hungry, hm?” you bounced her, drawing out a bubbly giggle. "Let’s go see dad, he’s probably somewhere out-”

There was a woman standing in his living room.

You thought you recognized her from somewhere, maybe a market or a passing street, before it clicked and you remembered the photo tucked in the lining of Horacio’s leather wallet, a grainy picture of a boy and a woman on the shores of a beach. It was his mother.

Her hair was different, though, a little more gray and in a neat twist at the nape of her neck. There were a few more lines nestled in the skin of her cheeks but her face was elegant, long and carved like her son’s. She was wearing a silk blouse and you looked down to meet the sight of your capris and bare feet, suddenly feeling extremely inadequate.

“She’s very pretty,” the woman told Horacio in a stage-whisper, a graceful hand adorned with red nail polish nestled in the crook of his elbow. He smiled as heat flushed your cheeks, your lips parted in momentary shock before you offered a quiet greeting, setting Isabella down. She toddled the few steps to meet her father’s legs, wrapping her small arms around his calves in a bid to be held.

“This is my mother, Paloma,” Horacio introduced as he picked up the small girl. The woman patted his hand lightly before letting go, her heeled flats making muffled sounds on the rug as she came towards you.

You offered your own name, laughing in surprise when, instead of reaching for your hand, Paloma pulled you into a tight hug. “It’s- it’s nice to meet you,” you said weakly against her hair. She smelled like jasmine flowers and you could just make out her son’s silhouette in your vision, cast in soft sunlight and standing easy.

“Come here,” she said, her hands resting on your arms as she let go. “Let me have a look at you.” You raised your eyebrows when she motioned for you to spin, turning slowly at her request. Paloma nodded a few times, seemingly pleased after she looked you up and down. You could only bite down a grin, bemused when Horacio mouthed something that looked like _I’m sorry._

_It’s okay,_ you mouthed back. _I like her._

“I was right,” she announced, the clink of her gold bracelets shaking. “You’re very beautiful.”

“Thank you,” you laughed, following when she moved to sit down. She clasped your hands in her own, her rings cold on your skin but her palms soft. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” you offered.

“And I, you,” Paloma hummed, calling for her son to hand her her granddaughter. “My son adores you,” she gushed, eyeing him with a whisper, “I see why.”

Horacio set Isabella down beside you with a brush of his fingers against your shoulder, a quick kiss at your temple before he straightened again. “Mijo, can you get me something to drink?” his mother asked in her native tongue. “And your girlfriend, too.”

_Girlfriend,_ you thought, not trying to fight the goofy smile that spread across your face.

_Nice._

⫸ ——–- ⫷

Paloma talked to you in lilting Spanish, the words hushed as the subject of her gossip opened kitchen cabinets in search of clean glasses. “He was the cutest little boy,” she said after a moment, humming as she looked down at the child on her lap. “Looked a lot like her, actually.”

You turned to Isabella, grinning. “Really?”

“Oh yes,” Paloma nodded, goading you to come closer with a conspiratorial wave of her hand. You leaned forward on the couch, feeling the cushions shift underneath your weight as she continued. “I have this one photo, from preschool. I found him in my closet, wearing these bright red heels and a pair of black lace-”

“ _Mama_ ,” Horacio interjected, hearing from the other room.

“What?” she responded, “It’s a good picture!”

You swallowed a small chuckle and shook your head. “Sounds like it.”

“I’ll show you one day,” Paloma assured you with a mischievous smile. “It’s wonderfully embarrassing.”

“Promise?”

“I swear on it,” she winked. “Next time you’ll have to visit me instead. I’ve been dying to meet you, and you’re just the sweetest thing. Isn’t she sweet, Horacio?” she called out again, meeting his nod as he walked from the kitchen, drinks in tow. Another rush of warmth spread across your face, blotching your neck and up your ears in mild heat.

You were grateful when Horacio handed you a glass of water, the ice washing down a cold relief in your throat. Paloma took her own sip, dainty and somehow not leaving any lipstick stains, before she spoke again. “I came here to take Isabella off your hands, actually.”

“Oh, that’s very nice of you, but I didn’t think we were going any-” you began.

Horacio interjected, moving as he stood behind you until his hands could rest warm at your shoulders. “That would be perfect.”

“Really?” you asked him, turning your head with a small smile. His thumbs rubbed a light circle into the rise of your neck before he spoke.

“We can go out somewhere,” he offered. “Are you hungry?”

⫸ ——–- ⫷

Horacio’s palm was broad on your back when he pulled out your chair.

You caught a glimpse of metal peeking above his waistband, sleek and dark and ever-present, but it didn’t really bother you. Only nagged a little bit, like an echo you’d grown accustomed to hearing and feel strange without. Guns were a given seemingly everywhere.

“Very chivalrous of you,” you laughed, meeting the shrug of his shoulders as he sat across the small table. Military men were like that, you supposed. Gentlemanly. Stoic.

His hand didn’t leave you, just traveled up your arm and down to rest heavy over your knuckles on the worn wood of the table. He touched you like someone would porcelain, rounded and cupping soft as to not disrupt the china cracks filled in by glue, yellowed by time and by tears. _I won’t break_ , you wanted to whisper. _I’m stronger now._

Your knees knocked against his and you gave a playful kick.

_I have found a home in you_ , you thought as the waitress asked what you’d like to drink. Black coffee for him, pink lemonade for you. Horacio teased you about being juvenile and you only wrinkled your nose, insisting that it tasted better than regular lemonade.

He conceded as he looked behind you for a moment (his back was never to the entrance, of course) and you were reminded of when you were a child, sitting on the outer banks of a stream on a sun-warmed stone and watching the shadows get longer. You didn’t really know why you thought of that.

Maybe you could take him one day, to the stream. To hear the babbling of water over rocks and to feel the way your bones soaked in the quiet. He deserved quiet.

_I have found a home in you,_ his eyes seemed to say when you wrinkled the damp wrapper of your straw because you always needed to be doing something with your hands, reaching for pink sugar packets and picking at their paper seams. He pushed his mug forward on the table and you dumped the sugar in.

You could both round the words on your lips when you leaned over the table, your kiss chaste and tasting like lemon crystals. _I have found a home in you._

Funny, how things worked. How life worked. It wasn’t perfect, because neither of you were, but it was alright. Better than alright. You still had nightmares but now he held you, steady and strong and whispering for you to breathe.

You didn’t know if he had nightmares. He didn’t sleep much, though. Hours getting longer and such. Maybe he was used to it all. Which scared you a little, if you were being honest, but not as much as it might someone else. You’d seen the shards of glass refracting in his face sometimes, when something unspeakable happened or the weight of the gun at his hip dragged a little too heavy. But you stared right back. A steady compromise. Eye for an eye. Heart for a heart. Soul for a soul until the blood crusted in your nostrils and you grew to like the taste of iron.

Home could be scary. But it could also be comforting. Because for every stain and bruise of his body, every cock of an unfamiliar trigger and the way people whispered, he kissed your cheeks and smiled. Tender-hearted for a drawn-out moment. For you.

You ate in a comfortable sort of silence, not needing words but not minding them either. The restaurant was a bit cramped but you liked it, enjoying the way you could hear the din of kitchen pots and feel its heat on your cheeks. An older woman wearing an apron smiled at Horacio and you raised an eyebrow.

“She knows me,” he explained as he gave her a passing wave. “I used to take Juliana here.”

“That’s nice,” you offered gently, following the way his eyes seemed to track a memory as they swept over the mismatched chairs. “When José got off work early, he used to take me to this restaurant downtown,” you remembered, nodding solemnly. “It was god awful.”

Horacio choked into his coffee and you grinned, lips curling up over the straw of your lemonade. “It was!” you protested when he looked at you again. “But he loved it and was always so excited, so I never said anything.”

“I get it,” he assured you after a moment, his expression settling. Yeah, he did. You both did. That was the thing you liked about him. About all this. Maybe it was bad to be glad you’d both been married, but maybe not. José was a good man and, from what you’d heard, Juliana was a good woman. They were good people. They’d loved you. Led you here.

Your eyes brightened at a shuffle of sound, discombobulated notes echoing through the small hall as strangers’ fingers plucked at guitar strings.

“He liked dancing,” you remembered wistfully, turning your head slightly to look at the small band now seated in the corner, a section of tables being removed to make room on the floor.

Horacio’s eyes softened when yours became glassy. “Juliana used to dance, too,” he said, cocking his head with a wrinkle of his brow. “Took me to salsa classes on our honeymoon.”

A laugh fought its way up your throat. “You- you went-” you sputtered as he reached over with a hand at your back, rubbing soft circles until your coughs slowed. “You- she-” you shook your head at the thought, incredulous. “ _Salsa?_ ”

He nodded, slightly amused but stiffening at the way your gaze fell back to the small crowd of couples now gathering on the floor. Your name fell from him in a warning tone but you pretended not to hear, drowning out the sound with a scrape of your chair as you stood.

“C’mon,” you pulled at him with a wink, your hands curling around his biceps. “I’m sure you remember something.” A sigh escaped him, seemingly bone-deep and teetering on dramatic, and you rolled your eyes. “Pleaaase?” you asked, dragging out the vowels. He moved to stand up and you smiled again, victorious.

The music playing was slow, thankfully, so salsa dancing wasn’t on the agenda. It was enough for you to ask and for him to say yes. So you led him by the hand (not pressing too hard because his knuckles were still bruised) and stood on the edges of the small “dance floor,” giving a wide berth to the other couples as you settled against him.

You felt a little silly just standing there and swaying, but his arms were strong and his eyes were soft so you just smiled, leaning in a bit closer. Friend to lover to friend to lover. Friend and lover. Aching, quiet, and familiar.

His chest was broad. His shoulders, too. Wide and steady for you to lean on when your demons were too loud and the world became too big.

The world is small when you’re with him. Cupped in your hands like spring water, holy because you believed it to be.

Saints and sinners have beautiful faces.

You don’t know which one he is.

You don’t think it matters.

Whatever cord that ties you to him, you don’t mind it being soaked gold or scarlet. As long as it doesn’t break. Doesn’t fray to snapping and leave you alone again on cold tile. Warm wood. Splinters.

“What are you thinking about?” Horacio mumbled, the words muffled into your hair as his hand moved to meet the swell of your waist. You lifted your head.

“Not much,” you whispered, your eyes tracing over the line of his jaw and the dark stubble on his cheeks. “Just... you. Us.”

You could feel his lips, brushing a feathered ghost of a smile. “Really now?” he asked, humoring your syrupy confession.

“Mhm,” you nodded, steadier this time. “Us.”

Horacio opened his mouth as if to speak but then closed it again, a muscle in his jaw tensing and prompting delicate concern. “Is something wrong?” you asked, not really wanting an answer because it meant you’d have to think of something else, outside of the little house you’ve built that dampened the noise of ugly things. He turned his head to the rest of the tables, still silent, shoulder blades shifting as a hand reached for the gun in his waistband. “Horacio,” you pleaded a bit more urgently, grabbing at his arms.

He whispered into your hair, gentle but firm. “Get your things. I’ll take care of the bill.” You nodded slowly, trying to keep from frowning as you made the few steps from the floor to your table, your purse hanging on the back of the wooden chair. The leather strap dug into the meat of your shoulder as he made quick conversation to one of the waiters, a flash of currency changing hands before his touch met the crook of your elbow. “We should go.”

“Horacio, is everything-”

“Now, please.”

He wasn’t one to beg and you weren’t one to whine. So you left, not exactly rushing but not slow either. The woman from before, the one he knew, caught your eye with a sad sort of smile. Like she was used to hurried exits.

It wasn’t until you were sitting in the Jeep, your hands reaching for the seatbelt, that his shoulders rolled back on their joints, loosening his tactical tenseness only slightly. He offered an apology as the ignition rumbled with a quiet engine roar, the street bumpy underneath you.

“It’s okay,” you replied, still concerned but knowing not to press. Men like him told you what you needed to know. If he wasn’t telling you, it was probably for a reason. At least, you hoped it was.

“I recognized some of his men in the restaurant,” Horacio explained with his eyes still on the road ahead. “Pablo’s,” he finished.

“Oh,” you responded, the word coming out more like a puff of deflated breathing as you fiddled with the bracelet on your wrist. You picked at the metal clasp with your thumbnail, needing something tangible to turn in your hands while the thoughts turned in your head, rolling backwards and forwards in your mind like they were billiard balls. Every so often they knocked together and you would open your mouth, but nothing came out in the end. Only air. Only thoughts.

“Horacio,” you turned to him, shifting until the material of your seat made a noise that dimly registered as funny. “Are things getting worse? With Escobar?”

A hand left the steering wheel, over the center console, reaching up and taking your own from where it was held balanced above your legs, your left elbow resting in the flesh of your thigh. Horacio squeezed lightly and you let yourself smile, pressing your lips to the sloping bone of his wrist as your fingers interlaced. He held tighter. It hurt a little.

“It’ll be alright, cariña,” he assured you. “Nothing we can’t handle, right?”

_We._ You and him.

“Right,” you repeated back to him. Maybe by saying it out loud, you could make it true.


	9. courtroom drama

Horacio mumbled something under his breath, low and unintelligible over the sounds of labored breathing and the shuffle of his boots against delicate bathroom tile. You quieted him with a hand pressed to his sternum, guiding the air out from underneath his ribs until it fanned over your arms. Your fingertips came away crimson, a patchwork watercolor of old wounds he never let heal and new ones that wet the heavy fabric of his shirt.

It was like a dance, almost, rehearsed and blocked half to death (although maybe you shouldn’t phrase it that way) until you knew each step. It’d been a year, after all. Didn’t really faze you much. You still had to catch the trembling of your hands, though - tiny and imperceptible to anyone else except maybe him.

“Hey, you’re okay, see?” you said as Horacio moved to sit on the edge of the tub, his forehead pressed to the cold porcelain of the wall. “You’re fine, you’re okay,” you said, repeating it more to yourself than to him. He nodded as you leaned down to unbutton his shirt, your knees knocking against his.

“I know,” he replied. “I’m with you.”

“Cheesy,” you teased as you blushed, scrunching your face. Horacio let out a quiet laugh, lifting his head to meet yours.

“True,” Horacio countered softly. You only hummed in response, lifting away his shirt. You could hear the sound of a Fisher-Price toy, some beeping, brightly-colored contraption that Isabella adored (and you couldn’t stand) in the living room, the toddler content for the moment being as you made quick work of her father’s scarlet stainings.

“You alright?” you asked when he didn’t say anything after a few minutes, running your hands underneath the cold tap water of the sink. Rivulets come off swirling like pink-lemonade, cruel intentions of loss taking on the appearance of something cloying. They stuck against the bowl before they were washed down and away, carrying all the things he’d seen with them.

You turned and crouched in front of him, a hand on his knee as you called out his name. He lifted your (left) hand as if studying it, eyes tracing every ridge of your knuckles and the tapering of your fingertips until you’re sure he had every one of your veins memorized, inundated and imprinted until they wove around his own, blue twine and red strings of fate physical then metaphorical and physical again.

“I’m fine,” he assured you, his thumb rubbing light sandpaper over the skin of your wrist. “Just… wondering.”

“What about?” you said, beginning to stand up. Horacio didn’t let go of your hand and you raised an eyebrow, expectant.

He rasped it, offhand as if it was obvious. Maybe it was. “Why I haven’t married you yet.”

You laughed quietly before you really processed what he said, your eyes widening for a moment before the words made any sort of sense in your jumbled synapses. _Oh._

“Is this your way of proposing?” you asked with a smile. His lips quirked up before he brought your hand up to his face, pressing a coppery kiss to your knuckles.

“Depends,” he mumbled against your skin. “Would you say yes?”

Would you? Say yes? To him. To someone like him, again. To everything that came along with that, again. To a life like that, again.

“Yeah,” you answered after a few seconds, your free palm smoothing back the hair from his forehead. “Yeah, I would.”

⫸ ——— ⫷

“Do you want a wedding?” Horacio said the next day as you sat on his living room floor, rolling a ball back across the carpet towards Isabella. You met her gummy, two-year-old smile with a grin before considering.

You imagined you’d both already had your fill of weddings. The tulle and the place settings and the planning. There was a picture you’d found once, of him and Juliana at his reception. You laughed at his haircut and he’d only smiled, a soft poke in your ribs reminding you of your own photo album. It was a gilded, velvet thing your mother had insisted on buying, filling it with hazy flash-bulb shots of everything from your half-eaten cake to your unfortunate hair. Yes, you both had your fill of weddings.

“Do you?” you responded.

He sighed, sitting down next to you. It was almost comical - this large, broad man clad in tactical green, cross-legged on the floor and dwarfing the plastic toy in his hand. He turned it around a few times, his thumbs smoothing over the grainy, canary-yellow casing.

You turned to take it from him, setting it down beside your legs. “I just want to be married to you, Horacio,” you assured him. “Everything else is just… details.”

“Details,” he repeated, following the curve of your arm as you bent to take his (your) daughter in your arms.

“Details,” you finished resolutely.

⫸ ——— ⫷

Maybe it was cliche, but it really did feel like fireworks went off when you kissed. Like fizzy rock candy, orange electric and sparking carbonated soda bubbles in your mouth when you met his touch and didn’t have to let go.

Your parents couldn’t come but it was okay. They’d make the trip soon. His mother had been there, though, bouncing Isabella on her lap and sitting on the wooden bench of the courthouse, smiling enough to make your cheeks hurt just looking at her. His mother and his men, stoic in their seats with pistols in their pockets. You could’ve sworn you saw a tissue, though. Trujillo wasn’t that tough.

He walked you up the tiny aisle and you held three dandelions, gifted from Isabella and picked from the tiny flower box outside your window. It was early summer a year after you’d met, sweat gathering on your temples and on the backs of your knees, but you didn’t mind.

“I now pronounce you husband and-” the officiant began, not being able to finish before you leaned forward with a hand on the collar of Horacio’s shirt, gripping loose but bringing him close.

Fireworks.

Yeah, fireworks.

You pulled away to the sound of laughter, yours and his.

“Hi,” you breathed out, your eyes shining. You could make out your reflection in his irises, bouncing back curved like a parallax and slightly glassy.

Horacio kissed you again. “Hello.”


	10. your heart wears night armor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set in 1991 i suppose

Domesticity during war is a curious thing. You’d left your old apartment years ago and a man had moved in beside you, in your new, promoted house, with his young wife and her stomach swollen by pregnancy. You’d smiled and been neighborly. Teased about play-dates and dinner parties and tight-lipped husbands, the way you used to. Had actually gone to a dinner party and admired their blue-edged china, pouring out the woman’s sparkling water as Isabella grabbed at your wrists.

She’d moved out, alone save for her child and one gifted medal. He was very brave, apparently.

You weren’t surprised when a new couple came by a few months later.

So you lived your life, a good life, a happy one, shielded by shoulders and smiles and rough-hewn hands clasped in prayer. Receiving the good favor of a virgin mother, wearing a painted clay veil and balming men’s conscience. Good Catholic boys, who died in the name of a “something” and looked Saint Peter in the eyes when they met him again. Your good, Catholic man. Rosaries and holy water. Unholy blood. Stained cherry glass and crimson hands. Prayers and prayers and prayers, made by mothers and fathers and wives.

You had prayed, once. Had knelt at an altar and let the wood dig into your knees like a penance for a sin you didn’t remember committing but felt guilty for enjoying anyhow. You pleaded for one promise to keep him safe and thanked a nameless saint for your fortune, sated when you heard the slap of your sandals on marble and the echo of all your thoughts in the high, vaulted ceilings.

Guilt is strange. “Healing” in quotation marks is strange. You always hated the way people phrased it, as if one day you’d arrive someplace and get a lacquered button pinned to your shirt pocket reading a congratulations. Dr. Reyes hated it, too, and you’d smiled when she made some long-winded metaphor about journeys and life and cat posters. For now you were content with walking, one hand held and one hand holding, with white-knuckled palm promises and the warm, curled grasp of a child.

⫸ ——— ⫷

You gripped the car keys, feeling them dig into your palm as you tried to brush off the hand on the doorknob. “Horacio,” you let out, frazzled with all the rush of a January morning, anxious and tired from the previous day’s shift. You didn’t need to work today though, thank _god_. “I can take my own damn daughter to her first day of school.”

His hand left the door, only to snake loosely around your waist. When you only sighed, not pulling away, a rough thumb came to rub at the curve of your jaw and bid your gaze to meet his. _She has your eyes_ , you’d once said. Dark and sloping, edged by black lashes. Bright. Gentle.

“No,” he said, apologetic but resolute. “You can’t.”

“I can,” you repeated weakly to yourself, your own hand starting to loosen its hold around the cold rings of metal. “Horacio,” you whispered, shaking your head as his arms wrapped a bit tighter. “The guards, the- the guns. They scare her.”

His brows knitted together while you spoke, quiet as to not alarm Isabella - now a few months shy of six - sitting by the kitchen counter in a blue school skirt. She didn’t look up from her the contents of her backpack, so you continued. “I’m just- I’m tired, I guess,” you admitted with a small hitch in your voice, examining the angry red indents left in your palms. You let him shift you until you faced away from the door, tucked closer into his chest, and reached to fiddle with the silver buttons of his uniform while you spoke.“It’s bad enough that they’re always outside.”

You looked up to see Isabella clambering off of her chair with a scrape of its legs against your kitchen tiles. _It’s first grade_ , she’d reminded you the night before in hurried Spanish while you brushed her hair, chiding her to sit still. She’d set out her uniform carefully, insisting on brightly colored hair clips and two tight braids. _We can’t be late._

Your now-husband squeezed your shoulders and his lips were pursed - not in annoyance, but in concern. “ _Mi amor_ ,” Horacio began, cupping the base of your neck and squeezing softly. _Mi amor,_ he called you. A love. _His_ love. Saccharine, maybe, to foreign ears but to him, to him it was doctrine. You let out a shallow breath. “It’s too dangerous without them,” Horacio reminded you, the rough pad of his thumb tracing over your lips.“You know that.” 

You closed your eyes, nodding into the lingering kiss left on your forehead. “Yeah, I know.” Smoothing away the pretend lint on his collar, you pressed your nose to his jaw before moving to step away, inhaling the soft scent of laundry and sandalwood soap. The arms around you loosened to let you go. “Doesn’t mean I like it though,” you mumbled, attempting petulance but failing when another kiss was placed on your cheek.

“We’ll be with her,” Horacio reminded you, his voice placating in your ear. “And it’s just Trujillo,” he assured. You perked up at the name and laughed when Isabella did likewise, her steps towards the both of you quick and echoing her new school shoes.

“Is he coming?” she asked, repeating the question in English and then Spanish again when neither of you answered quickly enough for her liking. Bouncing on the balls of her heels, Isabella tugged on the fabric of your pants with an urgency that seemed unfit for the slightness of her body. “Is he here? Is he going to drive us?”

You reached to smooth down the loose curls escaping from her braids and looked back behind you for confirmation, pleased to report in the affirmative when Horacio nodded.

She didn’t wait much longer for you to open the door, bounding down your front steps to meet the man now standing by a shelled vehicle, a tanned hand resting on the holster at his hip. 

“The Jeep?” you asked, incredulous. 

Horacio shrugged. “It’s bulletproof.”

“Right,” you answered slowly, watching Trujillo bend down to give the girl a hug. “And they couldn’t bulletproof, say, a minivan?” Horacio only chuckled, walking you down to the car, and you grew more serious. “Thank you, though. For bringing him, and not the… cavalry, I guess.”

In sunlight, Horacio's eyes were lighter - edged by shadowed rings but pooling in deep, fractured amber. Apologetic. “It’s the least I could do,” he said. 

Isabella glanced back towards the both of you and you caught the flash of a cellophane candy wrapper, accompanied by a _no le digas a tu mamá_ when Trujillo slipped it in her pocket. Waving at you with an impish smile, the officer slid into the passenger seat.

“I heard that,” you called out. He raised his eyebrows, declaring his innocence, and said nothing more.

The weather was slow with its languid breezes, blanketing everything in the soft smell of baked clay and clear mountain air. In the distance, the first swells of morning traffic began their course.

Isabella climbed into the car (or tank, depending on who you asked) and helped you buckle her seatbelt. When you turned to meet the back of the man behind you, you heard the girl plead, “Don’t kiss.”

When you asked why, she wrinkled her nose. “It’s gross.”

“You see us kiss all the time,” you replied, handing her her backpack. Horacio’s hand came to pass gently along your waist, a quiet reminder of the openness of the road you now stood on. 

Isabella shook her head, the dark braids tumbling beside her rounded cheeks. “It’s still gross.”

“How ‘bout you close your eyes,” you offered, leaning out of the car and hearing your husband’s quiet laugh. Catching Trujillo’s face in the reflection of the side mirrors, you grinned. “I can count down if you want.”

“Promise?” Isabella asked, raising her hands to cover her face.

“Promise,” you answered. “Are they closed? Good, okay on three. Ready? One… two… thr-” but your count was muffled, turning into a soft _mmph_ by a pressing mouth. Horacio’s hands curling around the Jeep doors as you reached to steady yourself on his shoulders. The kiss was chaste, quick and barely a peck, but you still smiled when he pulled away.

Running your tongue along your front teeth, you could taste the slow dilution of orange juice. “You can open them now,” you assured Isabella. The girl peeked out between her fingers and sighed in dramatic relief, letting her arms fall to her sides. “You too,” you said to the officer in the passenger seat. Trujillo only rolled his eyes in mild amusement, his gaze fixed firmly on a point far, far off in the distance. 

Horacio pressed his lips against your temple once more before you moved to sit down, waiting until you’d done your own seatbelt to close the car door behind you. His boots scuffed heavy against the stoned street and you spoke to Isabella as he walked to the driver’s side. “One day, y’know, you might actually like kissing.”

She shook her head emphatically, her expression one of exaggerated disgust. “Never. Never ever.”

“Suit yourself,” you responded, moving to face the front windows to see your husband now at the steering wheel, his expression fighting to keep itself stern. “Y’know,” you added in a stage whisper, “your dad’s a _very_ good kisser.”

“ _Gross!_ ”

⫸ ——— ⫷

“I didn’t cry,” you said, shaking your head as Horacio opened the car door for you a few minutes after the first school bell rang. When he only hummed and Trujillo (now on the driver’s side) let out a barking laugh, you protested. “I didn’t!”

Horacio hid his unconvinced sincerity with a slow nod. You leant against the edge of the door when it shut, its hollow metal hot from the sun underneath your temples. Orange starbursts swam across your vision when you swiped quickly at your face with your knuckles. “I didn’t cry,” you maintained, feeling the rising stuffiness of your throat. “It’s allergies. I’m very- I’m very... pollen-sensitive.”

That was technically true - he'd bought you enough pink antihistamine tablets and tissues enough times to prove it - but you knew it wasn’t the cause of anything now. The reason for your swollen eyes was sitting in a real, grownup chair after two years of preschool and one year of kindergarten, a pencil case filled to the brim with bright, sparkly markers. At _school._

The car floor shifted under your feet when your husband turned back towards you, offering the polaroids he’d taken just moments earlier. “Do you want-”

“- _yesthankyou_ -” you exhaled, grabbing the stack of photos from his hands. Spreading them out across your lap, you tried to swallow the lump in your throat. There was one of her getting out of the car… then her walking up to the front entrance... then another of her backpack, then of her shoes and Jesus, how many were there? 

You flipped through the rest, scatterbrained and trying to commit every single picture to memory until something prompted your pausing. It was a picture of you.

He must’ve taken it while you weren’t paying attention, oblivious to the camera and turned away, but you were smiling. A bright, blinding smile that seemed to seep pure sunlight through the waxy white paper, up through your fingertips and back towards the swelling of your quickening heartbeat.

“That one,” Horacio said, taking the photograph from you and tucking it into the front pocket of his uniform. “Is for me.”

⫸ ——— ⫷

The engine rolled as the men parked. “Are you sure he’s here?” Javier asked, taking off his aviators to examine the row of terracotta houses, with their red-tile roofs and stucco walls. It was quiet in the mid-morning, temperate and warm. Medellín, the city of eternal spring, was living up to its name. 

Steve stuffed his government I.D (the only way they’d gotten through the gate) back into his pocket and adjusted the belt on his hips. “S’worth a shot. Wasn’t at the office, was he?”

“No,” Javier hummed, scanning the street with his arms crossed, his fingers curling into the fabric of his shirtsleeves. “No, he wasn’t.”

Neither of the men seemed to notice the officer parked beside the street, waiting for his colonel to retrieve some forgotten files before returning to the embassy.

They walked closer towards the house, stepping over a small tricycle that lay forgotten on the front lawn. Steve lowered his sunglasses. “You think it’s his?”

A low laugh escaped Javier’s chest and he shook his head, his steps meeting the front door. “Nah, he has a little girl. From his first wife.”

Somewhere in the house footsteps echoed with a soft voice, too muffled to make out anything beyond the fact that it was a woman. Steve looked back towards his partner, perplexed.

“Second wife,” Javier explained before ringing the doorbell. “Never met her, though.”

The steps grew louder until a pause, with the small peephole of the door waxing their reflections. Steve held up his badge again and stepped back when various locks unlatched until the door was opened, creaking quietly on its joints. The first thing they saw was your arms, balancing a precarious stack of plastic toys while you nudged the door farther open with a struggling foot. Steve rushed forward to take some from your hands and you smiled back at him, letting out a sigh of relief.

“Sorry about that,” you breathed, setting the brightly colored books and toys on the floor beside you. “Caught me in the middle of cleaning up.” The men shared a quick look at each other, schooling their expressions from the slight shock created at your appearance. You were pretty and barefoot, sporting marker-stained jeans and a loose t-shirt. If they were expecting anyone, this definitely wasn’t it. “You’re DEA, right?”

Javier cleared his throat, elbowing the man beside him. Steve spoke up after a moment. “Yes ma’am. My name’s Agent Murphy, this man right here is Agent-”

“Oh!” you interrupted with a soft slap of your palm against your forehead, chiding yourself and opening the door farther. “Murphy? And Peña, right?”

They both nodded, albeit slowly, but you seemed impervious to their surprise, asking them if they wanted to come inside. The men declined and remained on the stoop, Steve realizing he still held a small rubber ball in his hands while Javier tried to keep his eyes above the scooped neck of your top. 

“Was there something you needed?” you continued, bending down to kick out a rise in your runner carpet. “Horacio’s talked about you sometimes, y’know. It’s nice to actually put a face to the name.”

“Horacio?” Steve mumbled to Javier, his lips curling back in an amused, Southern cadence. A man - Colonel to them, or maybe just Carrillo, but Horacio to you - loomed near the edges of the hallway and turned closer when you spoke, his face and his voice familiar as it called out your name. “Speak of the devil,” the blonde agent whispered. 

When you leant back into the man’s chest, both men quickly cleared their throats. Javier’s hands rested at his hips in a cocked stance, watching curiously as the colonel turned to whisper in your ear. The words were too quiet for anyone else to hear but you cast your eyes down, smiling to yourself before he pulled away. 

You looked back up, the open brightness of your face only magnified when it was placed beside your husband’s stern posture. “I think they need you,” you reminded him. Javier confirmed this with some big lead about a “La Quica” and you bit back a snort at the nickname, pressing your lips together to hide your laugh. It must’ve been kismet, Javier thought, that brought someone like you to someone like him. Someone, he suddenly remembered, who worked in a hospital, witness and mender to the very things Carrillo caused. The man’s eyes were marginally softer here, though, and his hand lingered light on your waist. So maybe it worked. 

“You’ll call later?” you asked, catching a soft grip on the colonel’s wrist when he moved to cross through the door. Steve glanced upwards when lips pressed quickly against your forehead, a quiet _of course_ spoken into your hair before he walked away down the front steps. 

“Surprised someone like that puts up with you,” Javier ribbed, bemused when Carrillo rolled his eyes.

Steve chuckled as they walked in steady tandem towards the parked cars. “Jealous?”

Javier hummed a casual _maybe_ , catching the faint edge of a smile on your husband’s face when you looked out the front window, your silhouette a shadow through gauzy yellow curtains. 

⫸ ——— ⫷

You leaned down to whisper in Isabella’s ear, encouraging her to take the few steps forward through the threshold of the office as she held a tall, disposable coffee cup. The rest that you’d brought were quickly put down before being taken by grateful men, their thanks muffled by the sound of lips on crinkling styrofoam. A man, the man you’d come to see, looked up to see you standing beside his desk, your frame edged by the evening light fracturing through the windows. 

“You didn’t walk here, did you?” Horacio asked, his voice and his brow drawn over with concern. You lay a hand on his arm, a quiet placation as you rested your hip on a rounded wooden edge. 

“I didn’t,” you glanced at the cluster of men on the other side of the room. You heard Isabella laugh, her small legs swinging back and forth as she was placed in a newly-emptied seat. “Hugo drove me.”

Horacio’s thumb traced over the slope of your wrist. “Hugo?”

“Pimienta,” you finished with another look towards the mass of dark green shoulders. “The new recruit.” Horacio nodded with a quiet _I see_ and you give another smile, too observed to do much more. “He’s very sweet,” you assured your husband, offering a small wave when the man (or boy, more like) looked back towards the both of you. Hugo’s returning grin was awkward, endearingly so, and you bit back a laugh when you caught the embarrassed ducking of his head, his dark skin hiding any rising blush. 

He was young, barely out of training and still learning to hide his fear. They all were. Stoic, maybe, when they opened your doors and carried your groceries, but young. So, so young.

  
You picked up a stray pen, twirling it in your hands as you surveyed his desk. It was annoying neat, and you huffed as you tried to find something more interesting than typed field reports and stacks of manila folders. “No pictures?” you teased. He only pointed to the top corner and your eyes followed, falling on a small frame holding a color photograph. It was mostly of you, but you could see Isabella’s face peeking out of its bottom edge, intruding on the shot with a goofy smile. Her hair was short, curling in dark loops around her ears, so it must’ve been from a few years ago. ‘89, maybe. Yeah, ‘89, when he took that week off in Panama City and spent the whole time trying to teach Isabella how to swim. “That one?” you asked, curious. “I thought you’d want something more… I don’t know… official? Looking?”

He raised an eyebrow, adjusting the frame to its proper place. “Would you like to pose for another one?”

You sucked in a breath through your teeth, remembering the day you had to pin what seemed like fifty military badges to his uniform. “No,” you said, examining the photo and shaking your head. “No, that one’s good.”

Horacio pulled you into the slight alcove of the office, the one filled with high-backed chairs and radio equipment that lay partially hidden from view. “They’re looking,” you mumbled, suddenly more conscious of the officers standing a few feet away. “They think we’re up to something.”

“Are we?” he asked, smiling. A laugh bubbled up in your throat and you shook your head. 

“I...” you began, your voice trailing off. He looked tired, and you were reminded of before, when infants used to cry in hallways and walls were thin. “I probably shouldn’t have come but you said you’d be home late and I just- I just wanted…”

He slid his hands up your arms until they rested at your shoulders, hushing you quietly before speaking. The soft skin of your lips fell from between your teeth and you swallowed, the words resting unfinished beneath your sternum. 

_I just wanted to see you._

_While I knew you were here._

_While I knew I still could._

His fingers rested heavy on the juncture of your neck, their tapering familiarity smoothing back the ache of knotting muscle. His watch was heavy, a tactical thing with a million little numbers, and its ribbed black straps dragged against the necklace holding your wedding ring. You heard Horacio’s men making conversation - questions in Spanish about Isabella’s school and her favorite colors, compliments on how nice her new shoes looked and that _tu madre fue muy dulce al traernos este café_ \- but they floated out of your head, momentary and paling in importance to the way his hands seemed to smooth out every wrinkle of your thoughts, until they lay flat and rubbed back softer with sandpaper fingerprints.

“You never told me why you needed to stay,” you whispered. He frowned slightly when you noticed the copper blooms dotting the edges of his sleeves, rolled up to rest at his elbows. “Did something happen?”

Horacio’s expression turned softer. Maybe to tamp down your worry. Maybe to try and make you forget it completely. He was like that with you. More gentle. Earnest. One hand raised to cup your jaw. “Nothing bad,” he said, shaking his head at your widened eyes, their color glassy from the fluorescence of office lamps.

“Promise?” you asked, wavering an echo of a morning’s conversation.

He straightened out, an oak to wrapping, shaded ivy. “Promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NO BETA OR EDITING WE FINISH THIS FIVE MINUTES BEFORE POSTING AND DIE LIKE MEN (ill go back and fix all the weird spacing later but im tiredt dkfdkfj) edit: forgot https://aint-it-a-gentle-sound.carrd.co check it out check it out lads


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